8 hours ago
The minaret of a mosque and the dome of a church are common sights in Egypt
The statements of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb, regarding granting freedom to build places of worship, including churches, without the need for a law regulating this, raised questions regarding the feasibility of current legislation to legalize the conditions and construction of churches in Egypt, which has the largest concentration of Christians in the Middle East. Is there a need to amend the current law or not.
In August 2016, a law was issued in Egypt to build and restore churches, which aims to legalize the status of unlicensed churches. Thus relying on verbal consents (as it once was) to build a church is no longer a legal procedure; Because this would reproduce the problem that the law is supposed to have been issued in order to solve it, according to observers.
However, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights considered that this law did not fully achieve the goal of its approval, which is to ensure the construction and restoration of churches easily and without complicated administrative procedures. The problem said that “the suffering of Christians in villages in order to build churches still exists because of the intransigence of officials.” And it called for the law to be amended, in a statement posted on its website at the beginning of April.
But Reverend Kamal Rushdi, head of the Supreme Synod of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Egypt, says that the legalization was set by the state to resolve the problems that occurred in the past, so that reliance on the law becomes a substitute for verbal approvals, whether to build houses of worship or houses of religious conferences.
And Rev. Rushdie adds to the BBC: “As the head of the Evangelical Presbyterian churches in Egypt, I testify that things are going in a wonderful and calm way. The legalization made many things easier for us.”
‘There are no crises’
He added, “If there are some obstacles, they will be resolved, but there are no crises. There is no arbitrariness in matters related to legalization. It may take some time only due to the nature of the procedure.”
For his part, Diaa Daoud, a member of the Legislative Committee of the Egyptian Parliament, believes that the law on building and restoring churches is “one of the gains”, telling the BBC: “We have solved with this law all the restrictions that were imposed on building churches in Egypt, and then we created a new situation that expresses On the civility of the Egyptian state and on the equality of all Egyptians without discrimination.
In his statements to Sawt al-Ahar newspaper, Imam al-Tayyib said: “I see that houses of worship do not need a law regulating their construction. Whoever wants to build a mosque, and the Ministry of Awqaf has the necessary capabilities for this building, let him build, as well as whoever wants to build a church and the capabilities are available, let him build.”
Commenting on the statement of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Daoud said, “The Grand Imam’s statement has a spiritual meaning, not a legal one. He does not speak with the logic of a man of law. He wanted to say that the construction of places of worship does not need to be restricted, but rather to release, and that Muslims, their imams, and their sheikhs have no objection to it. Building places of worship for non-Muslims.
Daoud added, “I, as a parliamentarian and a member of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee, say that any building in the Egyptian state can only take place following obtaining a license from the competent administrative authorities. There are legal obligations that must be fulfilled when building any building, not just a mosque or a church.”
Sisi and Sheikh of Al-Azhar
picture released, Getty Images
The Sheikh of Al-Azhar said, “Building a mosque in front of a church (or vice versa) is a type of abuse that is forbidden in Islam.”
The Sheikh of Al-Azhar’s statement came a month following the Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi directed the necessity of building a church next to every mosque that is built, saying in early March, during the opening of housing projects: “We will not build a mosque in a place without a church next to it … until If the number of Christians (in that area) was only 150… instead of any citizen converting his apartment into a church.”
But Daoud, for his part, clarified by saying: “I think that the Sheikh of Al-Azhar talks regarding cases of reverse construction and cases of stalking, which are reprehensible cases, and he does not warn once morest building a mosque next to the church, to speak.”
Observers believe that Sisi’s statements were part of a correction of the course that prevailed during the era of previous presidents. Where it was forbidden to build a church next to a mosque, they said.
inspirational calligraphyيوNe
The controversy over building churches in Egypt goes back to historical periods that are not recent. During Egypt’s subjugation to the Ottoman Empire, the process of building a new church in the country required a firman from the emperor in what was known as the “Humayun Line,” which set difficult conditions for agreeing to build a new church.
In accordance with this custom, the issuance of permits to build churches in Egypt remained restricted to the President of the Republic, before this authority was assigned to the governors during the era of the regime of former President Hosni Mubarak.
The Egyptian constitution issued in 2014 stipulates that freedom of belief is absolute, and the freedom to practice religious rites and establish places of worship for followers of monotheistic religions is a right regulated by law.
In January 2017, months following the law on building and restoring churches was issued, the Egyptian government formed a committee to manage the file of reconciliation and legalization of the conditions of Egyptian churches.
And in January 2019, Sisi inaugurated the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ in the new administrative capital, east of Cairo, as the largest church in the Middle East, according to government statements.
On April 20, the Committee for the Management of the File Conciliation and Legalization of the Status of Egyptian Churches agreed to legalize the status of 239 churches and attached service buildings, bringing the total number of churches and buildings that have received approval since the committee began its work so far, to 2,401 churches and affiliated religious buildings.
The number of Christians in Egypt
picture released, Archyde.com
The Coptic Egyptians represent the largest Christian community in the Middle East
The controversy over building churches in Egypt has always been accompanied by talk regarding the number of Christians, and there is no official figure for the number of followers of the Prophet Jesus in Egypt. The last census conducted in this regard was issued in 1986, and found that the percentage of Christians in the country does not reach six percent, while the Church says (according to an internal census) that the percentage is 15 percent.
The number of Christians in Egypt has long been a matter of controversy; It does not go beyond the circle of speculation, despite the fact that the official identity card contains the religion field.
But following the 1986 census, the census of religion was stopped in the population census, according to the instructions of the United Nations, according to a statement made by the head of the National Agency for Mobilization and Statistics in 2012.
In 2008, the Egyptian government announced that the number of Christians in the country does not exceed two million and 800 thousand people, and a statement was attributed to an official that Christians do not need new churches, and that existing churches are sufficient and more, which angered church leaders, so Pope Shenouda demanded The third is to make a census of the number of Christians through parishes and churches in Egypt.
In late 2018, Pope Tawadros II announced that the number of Christians in Egypt reached 15 million, apart from two million in the diaspora.
Sectarian events due to the construction of churches
Over the generations, Egypt witnessed in its various governorates numerous sectarian violence incidents, mostly related to building new churches or practicing religious rites in already existing churches, some claiming to be without official papers.
In the absence of legislation related to churches, this matter remained a flammable material at any time in Egypt, until the current regime saw a remedy for this inherited problem. Here we list a number of those events:
Khanka 1972
The most prominent incidents of sectarian violence once morest Copts began in 1972, in the Khanka neighborhood in Qalyubia governorate, north of the capital Cairo, where some people burned and removed a building belonging to a Christian association that was being converted into a church. This was followed by other events, which were contained at the time, especially in Assiut Governorate, in southern Egypt.
red corner 1981
Many consider the events of Al-Zawiya Al-Hamra, in 1981, in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, one of the largest sectarian events, which witnessed deaths. The former Egyptian President, Mohamed Anwar El-Sadat, had refused to describe these events as “sectarian strife”, and said that they were differences between Muslim and Christian neighbors. But other accounts indicated that it occurred as a result of Muslims’ refusal to build a church without a license in the area, and things developed into gun battles.
Maspero 2011
One of the most famous crises following the January revolution was what was known in the media as the “Maspero events”, which resulted in dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries. The events took place following a demonstration by the Copts, in protest once morest the demolition of a building that the Copts considered a church in the Aswan Governorate, southern Egypt. The protesters headed to the building of the Egyptian Radio and Television “Maspero” to erupt clashes in which the army and police intervened.